Schedule 3
Housing and Regeneration Bill
12:00 pm
Iain Wright (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Communities and Local Government; Hartlepool, Labour)
Broadly speaking, the procedure set out in schedule 3 is not dissimilar to those found in other pieces of legislation, and I draw to the Committee’s attention the Regional Development Agencies Act 1998, the Highways Act 1980 and the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.
Unlike the comparable powers in those pieces of legislation, in the Bill as drafted, there is no mandatory requirement for the Secretary of State to be satisfied either that an alternative right of way has been, or will be, provided, or that an alternative right of way is not necessary, although it is likely that those are matters to which it is reasonable to expect the Secretary of State to have regard when deciding whether or not to make the order. Including a requirement for the Secretary of State to be satisfied that one of the matters outlined above does in fact apply before making any order to extinguish a public right of way would make the provision far fairer in terms of natural justice and bring it into line with comparable legislative provisions.
Government amendment No. 19 allows the Secretary of State to make an order to extinguish a public right of way over any land of the agency, provided that the statutory procedure is followed first. It is not necessary to exclude land held by the HCA for its own administrative purposes from that power. For example, the agency may take office space in a building that forms part of a larger development for which it is necessary to extinguish a public right of way. The amendment effectively brings the provision in the Bill into line with the provisions that apply to the Urban Regeneration Agency under the 1993 Act. Although I am reluctant to mention it following our earlier discussion, the amendment has a modernised wording.